


Hold Your Love Hostage

by redbrunja



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dov wanted to hold her hands, he wanted to kiss her unbruised temple, he wanted to put his hand on her belly and count her breaths. He felt like he'd gotten a glimpse of a different world tonight, a world without Gail Peck, and it was horrible, it was even worse than the one he currently lived in where his best friend hated him and he was in love with someone who thought he was a joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Your Love Hostage

Not even Dov would say he  _liked_  getting called to a domestic disturbance but tonight, he was so grateful for any kind of action that he fumbled and almost dropped the radio in the process of answering it.

Gail didn't roll her eyes or sigh or make any funny, cutting comments regarding his clumsiness.

Yeah.  _That's_  how awkward things were.

Dov had a pretty high threshold for awkward – he was, you know, himself, so years of practice there – plus things with Chris had gone from bad to worse after Gail had taken eight hours of personal time and completely removed any trace that she's ever lived in the apartment. (Dov had spent forty minutes in the bathroom that night and hadn't even found a hairband. He had the suspicion that he could've dusted for prints and he still wouldn't have found any evident that Peck had lived with him and Chris for several months.) Sure, it was  _uncomfortable_  when he was partnered with Chris, or when he was at home with Chris, but at this point, when he was alone in the apartment Dov found the silence to be guilt-inducing and lonely and accusatory.

So his standards for awkward were pretty damn high.

But getting partnered with Gail on Christmas Eve was just  _cruel._  It was just him and the woman he loved, the woman whose personal life he had _completely_  fucked up, in a squad car, for eight hours. Everywhere he looked, he saw lights or trees or carolers and all he could think about what how tense and taken-aback Gail'd been while he babbled about how awesome she was and their hypothetical children. Seriously, their hypothetical children. Jesus.

Next to him, Gail continued to be silent and gorgeous and remote. Her mouth was painted a sinful shade of red and she'd gone heavy with her foundation, her skin looking pale and flawless and kind of unreal.

Sometimes, Dov had no idea how he'd fallen in love with her. Other times, he was surprised it had taken so long.

The only thing she'd said when they got their assignment was, "I'm driving."

That had been six hours ago.

So getting a call to go break up an ugly, abusive situation? That had to mean his night was looking up.

He got the address and Gail hit the lights and the gas almost simultaneously. Four minutes and twenty seconds later she double-parked outside of a brownstone apartment building and they both exited the car like it was on fire. The slap of the December air against Dov's face, the way it stabbed deep into his lungs, the wet slurry of snow and ice under his boots - all of it steadied him, made him feel like a cop with a job to do. Made him feel like he actually mattered.

As soon as they entered the lobby, the air over-warm, they heard screaming. "Let's go," Gail said, breaking into a run as she hit the stairs, "Get back inside, we'll handle this," she shouted at the bystanders standing in their doorways, all of them looking down the hall and clearly unwilling to get involved. Gail skidded to a stop at Apartment 108, steadied her stance, and then slammed her boot into the door just below the lock.

"Police!" she shouted, "hands in the air!" and she stormed inside like a valkyrie.

(And, okay, the door had looked pretty damn flimsy but still, Gail had just won about a zillion and three coolness points in his book.)

The screaming ended like it had been cut off with a knife.

And wow, there were a lot of disturbing implications in that thought. Dov shook his head, focused on the situation which was – empty living room, Gail striding into the next room, gun drawn, his own side arm in his hands and he didn't remember deciding to unholster it, and in the kitchen there was – an adult woman held against the wall by a male perpetrator and under the table was a boy, just a little boy, and there was a steak knife sticking out of his leg. A fucking steak knife.

"Step back and put your hands up," Gail ordered in an icy voice, gun steady.

"This is fifteen-oh-four, we've got a ten-seventeen," Dov said into his radio, "Get the EMTs here now," He holstered his weapon, grabbed the tablecloth (knocking salt and pepper shakers and two plates onto the floor) and went to his knees next to the kid, applying pressure around the blade of the knife. The kid's eyes were glassy and the bleeding was already worryingly sluggish.

"This is a misunderstanding," the perp said but he stepped back, releasing the woman. She sucked in a deep breath and then started crying, her sobs hard and noisy as she slid down the wall, arms coming up over her head.

"Turn around, put your hands behind your head," Gail continued.

The guy laughed at that, the sound ugly and incredulous.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Gail snapped. "Turn. Around."

Dov was focused on the kid, trying to get him talking, trying to get him alert, and he missed what happened next. He heard the scuff of shoes on linoleum, the the creak of leather, the jingle of Gail's cuffs, and then an ugly  _thwack_ of impact.

The perp had his hand clenched in Gail's collar, a soapy frying pan in the other and Dov scrambled out from under the table, graceless and slow, and the guy hit Gail with the frying pan again, her legs buckling under her. She was four meters away and it might as well have been four kilometers and Dov was going to be too late and Gail was on her back and the perp was yelling and Gail curled her leg into her chest and then drove her heel into his groin like a battering ram.

The perp dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Then Dov was on him, wrenching the man's arms hard behind his back, cinching the handcuffs as tight as they could go. He could feel his lips moving, forming the words of the Charter to Rights and Freedoms but he couldn't hear it, all he could hear was a hot, panicked buzzing in his ears.

Gail was panting, blood dripping down her forehead. "I'm alright, it was nonstick, it was a stupid nonstick pan, I'm alright," she repeated, but she crawled across the floor to the injured kid instead of walking. Dov kept his knee hard in the perp's back and thought about nothing but homicide and a world without Gail and how many bullets were in his gun until the EMTs arrived, Swarek and McNally hot on their heels.~~~  
"How many times do I have to tell you I'm  _fine_."

Dov hadn't even reached the door of the exam from when he heard Gail's voice, annoyed and acerbic and alive. At the station they'd kept telling him she was fine, that it was just a concussion, but judging by the way relief made his legs embarrassingly floppy - like, to the point where he had to lean against the hospital's ugly pea-green walls for a minute - he hadn't totally believed them.

He straightened up when the nurse exited Gail's room, walking briskly and muttering something about stubborn cops. He took a deep breath and walked softly into inside. Gail was sitting with her back to the door, hands gripping the edge of the bed. He could see the bumps of her spine between the edges of the hospital gown she wore and he wanted to kiss the pale skin there, wanted to press his ear to her back and hear the beat of her heart.

"Hey," she said, over her shoulder. "What happened?"

Dov shook his head, walked around to stand in front of her. "The kid - he didn't make it."

Gail blinked at him. "Oh," she said, softly, and then lifted her chin. "That's not a surprise."

He looked at her forehead, already swollen and bruised, butterfly bandages holding broken skin closed.

He wanted to touch her so badly.

He wanted to hold her hands, he wanted to kiss her unbruised temple, he wanted to put his hand on her belly and count her breaths. He felt like he'd gotten a glimpse of a different world tonight, a world without Gail Peck, and it was horrible, it was even worse than the one he currently lived in where his best friend hated him and he was in love with someone who thought he was a joke.

"I'm fine, Dov," Gail said, "Seriously."

"We'll, I'm not," Dov said, thickly, and Gail bit her lip, hard, like she was holding something inside. She didn't say anything and Dov realized  _she_  was in the hospital and  _he_ was being needy and chances are, he was making a bad night worse for her. He opened his mouth to make his excuses and then Gail grabbed his forearms, sudden and unexpected, like all her gestures of affection.

"You should," her tongue flicked across her bottom lip. "–you should probably stick around then, until you are. You know, fine." She tilted her head, consideringly, but he could feel her fingers shaking slightly and her words didn't have their normal bite. "That might take a while."

Dov waited a minute, waited for her to take it back, and then carefully sat down next to her, pulling the folded blanket at the end of the bed up over her shoulders.

"Eh, no big," he said, "I've not nowhere better to be."


End file.
